There have been talks over the ubuntuforums, regarding a user posts “sudo rm -rf /” command on “Absolute Beginner Talk” board, which results in deletion of the whole root directory of a Linux operating system (Ubuntu included).
Was the user out of his line when he’s posted such command on a beginners forum? Absolutely.
Exercise Caution When Running sudo
Users should exercise caution when running command with root privilege (sudo) . I pity to those who unknowingly execute the command and completely destroy their operating system. Its a truly lame attempt to humor oneself at the expense of others losing their precious data.
It is not a bug in coreutils, it is not a bug at all
But the lamest part is, somebody took the time to file a bug report regarding “sudo rm -rf /” on Launchpad.
There’s nothing wrong with that command, it did what it supposed to do, and that is the behavior expected from a Unix/Linux based system, there’s nothing wrong with that command at all.
Besides, if somebody compromised your system and got into your root accout, you are screwed anyway as there are a lot of other command which has the same (if not worse) devastating effect as “sudo rm -rf”, a fact that has been acknowledge on the same bug report
What do you think ?
I don’t know about you, but I felt more comfortable educating newbie users to be more careful when running command with root privilege than supporting an act which seems to ‘cripple’ the operating system itself. Trust me, this is not going to help newbie users.
p/s: I’m in complete agreement with this guy, this is not a bug, stop pampering newbies or else you’d ruin each and every of them!
